Giving Compass' Take:

• Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) created a game about cleaning and managing fecal waste matter in Africa, in an attempt to help individuals understand urban sanitation issues.

• How can this game help inform potential donors about urban sanitation problems and WASH funding?

• Read about the invisible barrier to urban water and sanitation. 

It’s a real challenge to support the private sector to provide sanitation services to the poorest urban residents.

On the one hand, the private sector will only get involved if services can be profitable; on the other hand, low-income customers with very little disposable income will only pay if a service is extremely low-cost. And shouldn’t the public sector be involved, too?

Amid poor regulation in the sector, unlicensed operators with questionable business practices dominate– making it hard for formalized, licensed operators to compete. And of course, if operators don’t deliver safe services, any public health benefits will be minimal.

It was the interplay between these different variables that inspired us to create a game that models how the private sector plays a role in urban sanitation service delivery.

The game – The Bottom Line – challenges players to imagine themselves as an entrepreneur who is seeking to expand into fecal waste collection in a fictional African city.

Clearly, fecal waste collection is quite a specific topic for a game to explore – but our intention is to bring to life the challenges and day-to-day decision that a small business owner must overcome if they are to successfully develop an urban sanitation service.

Read the full article on urban sanitation services by Steve Metcalfe at WASHfunders.